RCA 621TS restoration -- in pictures

[Electronic M]

I tend to use a cork-screw to remove the lytic cores. I also tend to stuff the ends of my restuffed paper caps with paper towel pieces or some such so I can reuse the original wax for an original look and not run out trying to fill all that extra empty space that the paper towel fills.

[Sandy G]

I'm in awe...

[Tom Albrecht]

Originally Posted by charokeeroad

Tom, Can you give us a shot with the chassis in the cabinet. I realise the CRT doesn't quite have the support on the chassis that would make that easy but it would be nice to see it complete.

Sure - here are a few shots of the set in its cabinet. The cabinet will be refinished by someone else, so for right now it is not exactly a thing of beauty to behold. Its safety glass is missing (but fortunately it is easy to get a new piece of safety glass custom cut at any decent glass shop).

All the hard-to-find stuff is there, including all chassis cages and covers, the original back, knobs, and channel selector escutcheon.

[Tom Albrecht]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

I've been working on this stuff for 55+ years and I've never heard of that O'donnell brand of capacitor. They must've been replaced at one time in the life of this set.

I've never seen that particular brand before either. However, they really did look original. Sometimes you can get a pretty strong indication by how the capacitor is nested amont the other components and wires, the state of the solder joints, and the lengths of the leads. I'm pretty sure that every capacitor in here was original, except for the big bumblebee-like tan/grey cap visible in the "before" photo a few pages back.

This set had capacitors from O'Donnell, Aerovox, C-D, and Good-All. Looking carefully at the caps, I was surprised to see the home town of Good-All was Ogallala, Nebraska. If you've ever been there, it's a pretty small town in the far west of Nebraska, with not much else around. Good-All was probably the most famous company to ever manufacture something there!

In 1946-47, the supply of capacitors may have been a little dicey, with the nation's industry transitioning from war production to consumer goods. Not much of anything shipped in 1946 for electronics. Perhaps this overall situation led to some no-name caps being used by a big name manufacturer.

Just a guess, though.

[miniman82]

There's an RCA ad for the 21-CT-55 where they boast of having many different parts from many different manufactures, so it's not a stretch to imagine the same thing happened even earlier on.

[charokeeroad]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I'm in awe...

I'm in AWESOME! too Tom


Thanks for all your hard work.

[kvflyer]

Nice job Tom as usual. I really like that style of set but most likely won't ever find one that I can afford. I am glad that you got it because you have done a wonderful job.

[Tom Albrecht]

Thanks for all the kind comments, everyone.

I'm just a hired mercenary on this one! It belongs to someone else. Should turn out really well once the cabinet is refinished.

[Boobtubeman]

Immagine what that RCA AD would look like TODAY

[mstaton]

A blank page. LOL

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I tend to use a cork-screw to remove the lytic cores.

That sounds easier than the ratcheted-in lag bolt and Channellock pliers method that I have used.

[Reece]

The last 'lytic guts I yanked smelled faintly just like a dairy cow barn. Weird.

[Glenz75]

Originally Posted by mstaton

A blank page. LOL

HAHAHAHAHA! So true!

Tom, what great work you have done on that RCA Cheers

[Boobtubeman]

Actually, besides a blank page, i was thinking something modern, along the lines of an assembly line with the molding boards with parts like youd see when assembling a model car

SR

[Tom Albrecht]

I received a request to bring back the original pictures to my posts in this thread. Originally they were hosted by a different site, and are now lost. So I will post all the necessary pictures here in new posts at the end (I still have the originals) and link them back to the old posts (which will all show a new edit). I hope the moderators don't mind this method of fixing the problem.

So here goes... There will be multiple posts to cover all the necessary pictures.